Yes! They should! Why do we sanctify offence in this way? It's not a matter of hiding, It's a matter of saying:
"You're free to express your disagreement, and I'm free to express my opinion, and hopefully these conflicting points of view will lead us to a better understanding of each other if we can both be respectful and talk."
Because how do we define being "legitimately offended"? How do we know when the offended party is just being "hypersensitive"? Topically enough, there's a woman in the comments of this very article picking a fight with me because I commented on one of her posts, and I quote:
"Hi *****. Thanks for the mention and I'm so sorry to hear about your health problems. I hope you continue to be a kind presence in your community (and on Medium) for many years to come."
She's mad enough at me about this that she spent most of yesterday picking a fight with me and today she blocked me. I know you'll think I'm leaving out some important context (I would too), but I swear I'm not. If you feel like it, you can go through the comments here and find the conversation.
My point is, is this legitimate or not? And how do we know? To her, obviously, it is. Though I couldn't get to the bottom of why, she thinks this message was deeply offensive. And while this is obviously an extreme (and bizarre) example, it illustrates my point. As Ricky Gervais so eloquently put it;
"Just because you're offended, it doesn't mean you're right."
As far as the ranking of oppression, here we agree. I didn't like that bit either. But I also don't think it was hateful. It was, in my opinion, a poor attempt at a joke. It lacked the level of thoughtfulness you'd expect from a comedian of Dave's stature. In fact, I think there are numerous points in the special where you could make the same criticism.
Many people have pointed out that this is Dave basically processing his frustration with his treatment by the LGBT (or really just the T) community, and I think that's totally fair.
As a writer, I think he could and should have done a better job of expressing that frustration and should have educated himself better on some of the topics before talking about them. Even in jokes. Not because of offending anybody, but because he has an opportunity to make a lot of people think.
As an observer of the culture wars I don't think there's any way, however reasonable, that he could have raised his legitimate issues about the way a meaningful segment of the online trans community behave without being pilloried. So I understand the desire to just say "Well, screw it then!"
But as a fellow human being, I totally understand his frustration with the "untouchable" status of the trans community in particular. This comment is already super long (sorry 😅), so I won't go into detail, but I think there is significant harm being done by the fact that we can't have honest conversations about trans issues.
As I mention in the article (and as I think Dave was uncharacteristically clumsily trying to say), there's no similar level of protection for women or black people or any other "marginalised community. Dave jokes about child molestation and HIV (but in a straight person so it's fine) and slavery and even #metoo. And nothing. But a few trans jokes and look what happens.
I'm not arguing that people shouldn't be criticising the special. Nor am I saying people don't have the right to be offended. I'm saying the level of outcry is ridiculously disproportionate. I'm saying it's weird that he can joke about slavery and child molestation but not about Adam's apples. And I'm saying that it's worth thinking about why Dave is mad about how this "powerless" community treats people, like Rowling, like Dorman, and now like Dave, who disagree with them.
